Editor's Note:
CyberAlerts have been less frequent than usual recently and will continue
to be for the next few weeks because of several other pressing projects
I'm involved in at the MRC. Plus, I flew to California this past weekend
for a wedding and am in a wedding party this weekend. But, you can count
on the fact that whenever bias breaks out, I'll break in.

Blaming America First. There would not have been a coup in Pakistan and
that nation would soon have abandoned its nuclear testing -- if only the
Republicans had realized Clinton's wiseness and ratified the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Knowing the Senate will not approve
the treaty, ABC's John Cochran argued in a one-sided World News Tonight
piece Tuesday night, "the Pakistanis may now feel freer to pursue
their nuclear ambitions" and "the same is true in India."
Cochran highlighted a supposed expert who complained that after the U.S.
spent years urging other nations to adopt the treaty, not passing it means
"other nations look and see that the President's word can't be
trusted." Duh.

Presuming treaty
passage is desirable, NBC honed in on who was responsible for its plight,
prompting Claire Shipman to hit Clinton from the left. Dan Rather
ominously intoned that the Pakistani coup has the "world on
edge," but the CBS Evening News led instead with black and white
video of people running in a cafeteria.

Here's how the
three broadcast network evening shows on Tuesday, October 12, linked the
CTBT vote and the coup in Pakistan:

-- ABC's World
News Tonight. Over video of the ground collapsing and convulsing during a
nuclear test, John Cochran began:
"This is what the treaty was supposed to
stop: more underground tests. The treaty takes effect only if the 44
nuclear-capable countries ratify it. So far, 18 have not, including
Russia, North Korea, China and also Pakistan and its rival India. If the
United States had ratified the treaty that might have pushed them into
accepting it. Instead, the Pakistanis may now feel freer to pursue their
nuclear ambitions. And, as ABC's Mark Litke found, the same is true in
India."
Litke popped into the middle of Cochran's
report: "Now India can take the moral high ground, saying, 'Look,
if he United States can't this treaty past its own Congress, surly
Americans will understand the difficulty India has getting this treaty
past the many factions in its own government.'"
Cochran picked up his crusade: "Almost all
of America's allies have ratified the treaty and they were counting on
the United States to persuade others to follow. The treaty supporters say
the Senate is not only killing the treaty, but damaging America's
credibility."
Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace then asserted: "For years the U.S. was dragging
other nations into this treaty, pledging that it was going to support the
treaty. Now other nations look and see that the President's word can't
be trusted."

If it took this
for world leaders and intelligence operatives to figure that out then they
really are in trouble.

Cochran then
offered a throwaway line for the other side of the issue, concluding:
"But Senate Republicans say it is naive to believe that the rest of
the world was waiting to see what the U.S. would do and that argument is
carrying the day. Without the treaty Bill Clinton's successors will have
the option of testing nuclear weapons. Other countries will have the same
option."

But as NBC's
Andrea Mitchell noted on the NBC Nightly News, passage of the CTBT hardly
would have ensured Pakistan went non-nuclear. Contrasting the coup's
military leader with the Prime Minister he deposed, Mitchell observed that
he's "less known to the West than [Prime Minister] Sharif who under
White House pressure held a summit with his Indian arch-rival, withdrew
his guerrillas from the Indian border, even talked about stopping nuclear
tests -- steps widely unpopular with Pakistan's military and the
public."

Applying some
logic here that Cochran missed, if the U.S. approved the CTBT and
Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif then campaigned for his country to adopt
it he would have angered the same military leaders who would have soon led
a coup against him so they could continue testing.

-- CBS Evening News. A coup in a nation with
nuclear capabilities in an unstable region of the world where a neighbor
nation also has the bomb may be newsworthy, but CBS has its own
priorities. The show led with a video from inside Columbine High School
showing students running and a shooter firing to set off a smoke bomb.
Then anchor Dan Rather got to the "political upheaval that has the
world on edge."

Following stories
on the Pakistani situation, Rather tied events to the Senate treaty vote,
delivering this imbalanced summary which only relayed the argument of
those in favor of the treaty:
"President Clinton and Senate Republicans
are still in a deadlock over the nuclear test ban treaty. It faces certain
defeat if it comes up for a vote and some Senators feel that would send a
dangerous message to the world. President Clinton wants to postpone the
issue, but Republican leader Trent Lott says he will go ahead with a vote
tonight or tomorrow unless he has a quote 'absolute commitment' that
President Clinton will not bring it up again while he's in office."

-- NBC Nightly News opened with the overview
report from Andrea Mitchell cited above in the ABC rundown. Tom Brokaw
then assumed that not approving the treaty is a failure, as he reflected
the media attitude that words in treaties are binding, a view that ignored
the likelihood that the U.S. is simply handicapping itself while other
nations violate what they sign. He intoned:
"These developments in Pakistan were
unfolding just as President Clinton and Congress were in a showdown in
this country over a nuclear test ban treaty and Pakistan was one of the
flashpoints cited by those who want the treaty signed now. However, as
NBC's Claire Shipman reports tonight it appears the President started
his campaign too late and this turmoil in Pakistan, I gather Claire, is
not helping."

Shipman, unlike
her ABC and CBS colleagues, actually ran through some arguments forwarded
by treaty opponents in addition to its backers, before she came back to
Brokaw's concern -- who do supporters blame for the lack of approval:
"Some treaty supporters blame not only Republicans for this outcome,
but also the President for what they say was a late and lackluster
lobbying effort."

The mainstream U.S. media assume that population growth is bad, so
naturally the UN's estimation that the world's population has exceeded
six billion people prompted a spate of network news stories. Sunday night,
NBC Nightly News proceeded from the premise that lower population growth
is better. Steve Allen of ConservativeHQ.com alerted me to this story
which the MRC's Mark Drake transcribed.

In her October 10
piece reporter Kiko Itasaka compared China and India, assessing China's
"strict government approach" with forced abortions more
successful than India's supposed "democratic and open" path.
Itasaka contended:
"China, with 1.2 billion people, the world's
most populous nation. India with 1 billion, catching up fast. Combined
more than one third of the world's population. Two countries grappling
with huge populations, increasingly, drastically different ways of coping.
In communist China, a strict government controlled approach. For the last
forty years, one child per couple but justification it was necessary to
help the masses. A policy sometimes brutally enforced. Mandatory abortions
and sterilizations, and examples of infanticide and abandoned baby girls
ending up at orphanages. The population is now leveling off and after
forty years, may begin to decline.
"In India a very different strategy. After a
brief attempt in the '70s to enforce sterilization of women with large
families, officials decided on a more democratic and open approach
adopting family planning approaches. The result: a population growing by
more than 20 million every year and increasingly poor. The statistics
reveal dramatic contrasts. In India half the population lives below the
poverty line. In China it's just one third. In India just over half are
literate. In China more than 80 percent. India, in other words,
impoverished but free. Explosive growth and freedom in India. Less of both
in China. Two approaches worlds apart."

Just "one
third" of China is below the "poverty line"? A poverty
lined defined as what exactly? I'd bet about 95 percent of the Chinese
live without the comforts of and below the calorie intake level of the
average American in poverty.

As to population
growth being a bad thing, as ABC's John Stossel showed in his special a
few weeks ago, crowded places like Hong Kong boom because of economic
freedom while crowded places like India fester because of socialist
policies that put bureaucrats in charge of the economy. And women have
fewer children in a stable and prosperous society, as the low birth rates
in the U.S. and Europe demonstrate.

NBC's Katie Couric and author Stephen Dubner uncovered the Unabomber's
"human warmth." Dubner, author of a book about Ted and David
Kaczynski and an article on the same subject in this week's Time
magazine, appeared on Tuesday's Today.

Co-host Katie
Couric, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed, picked up on Dubner's warm
assessment of Ted, aka the Unabomber:
"Describe his personality. He comes across
as a pretty agreeable, personable, almost charming guy."

Dubner agreed:
"I really wouldn't disagree with any of that. The thing that we gotta
remember is that yes, he has, when you sit and talk to him you really do
see the human warmth or the capacity for human warmth that David, for
instance, described over the years. And you can understand why David loved
his brother even though he was obviously, very, very troubled. On the
other hand he'll let something drop. Talking about violence as a solution
to certain problems and so on. And you realize that those, those kind of
statements are dropped with a seeming casualness that make you say, 'Hey
just because someone is, seems like a good guy doesn't mean that we can
divorce him or her from the acts they may have committed.'"

Mighty generous of
Dubner to agree that maybe Ted should remain in prison.

Once again, instead of challenging John McCain from the right on his
liberal, big government control, campaign finance "reform"
ideas, a media outlet assumed having a large supporter base is
"obscene." ABC's Charlie Gibson also didn't miss an
opportunity raise George W. Bush's attacks, as Gibson wondered if the
GOP is "too much a captive of the Right?"

McCain appeared on
Tuesday's Good Morning America. Co-host Gibson assumed that raising a
lot of money is "obscene." Check out this exchange caught by MRC
analyst Jessica Anderson:
Gibson: "You have been pushing campaign
finance reform for quite some time."
McCain: "And we will go at it again
tonight."
Gibson: "Given the fact that it is so
important, what does it say about the system when one candidate raises
more than $50 million. Is that obscene?"

No more obscene
than the fact that ABC has a bigger budget to promote a liberal agenda
than the MRC does to combat it.

Gibson later
raised George W. Bush's left-wing rhetoric:
"Governor Bush said that your party was
trying to, the congressional leadership was trying to balance the budget
on the backs of the poor. You agreed with him when he said that. Is the
leadership of your party in Congress out of touch with the American public
and is the party too much a captive of the Right?"

I'm waiting for
Gibson to ask Al Gore or Bill Bradley if the Democratic Party is "too
much a captive of the left?"

On Sunday's Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert asked guests Tom DeLay
and Bill Bennett about Rush Limbaugh's denunciation of George W.
Bush's attacks on conservatives, but he also tried to illustrate why
Bush was on target about how House Republicans wish to "balance the
budget on the back of the poor." In doing so though, Russert
distorted the GOP plan by falsely equating the earned income tax credit (EITC)
with income tax refunds.

On the October 10
show Russert raised the idea which had caused Bush's left-wing hit, the
idea of spreading out EITC payments over 12 months instead of paying
recipients on one lump sum. Russert demanded of House Majority Whip DeLay:
"Mr. DeLay this is a refund. Could you
imagine if you had said that you're going to pay out tax refunds for the
rich on a monthly basis rather than a lump sum, there would be
insurrection. And it's the government holding the money and making money
off the working poor."
DeLay tried to straighten out Russert: "Well
this is something that comes out of Washington. This is not a refund Tim.
This is a direct payment from the American taxpayers to the working poor
that was set up back under the Ford administration as an incentive to keep
the poor working. It is not a refund. It is a direct check to the working
poor that averages about $2,000 could go up to $3,800 a year that the
working poor is receiving. We think it's important that they receive
this so that they could pay their monthly bills and we don't cut a dime
from any of it."

Russert pressed
on, this time summarizing an image the media created: "Fairly or
unfairly, however, the perception of the Republican Congress is that they
want to give an $800 billion tax cut, most of it, much of it to those who
earn more money because they pay more taxes, but when it comes to the
earned income tax credit for the working poor they want to give it out in
monthly installments rather than a lump sum."

Add Eleanor Clift and Al Hunt to the list of media liberals pleased with
George W. Bush's use of liberal buzz words in attacking conservatives
last week.

In addition to
employing a McGovernite phrase about balancing the budget "on the
backs of the poor," on October 5 Bush declared:
"Too often on social issues my party has
painted an image of America slouching toward Gomorrah. Too often my party
has focused on the national economy to the exclusion of all else, speaking
a sterile language of rates and numbers. Too often my party has confused
the need of limited government with a disdain for government itself."

As noted in the
October 8 CyberAlert, Geraldo Rivera considered that "a helluva
speech."

-- On the
McLaughlin Group over the weekend Newsweek's Eleanor Clift crowed:
"George W. Bush just wrote the ad for Dick Gephardt and the Democrats
for next year. I mean, that statement about balancing the budget on the
backs of the poor is terrific."

On Saturday's
Capital Gang on CNN Al Hunt, Executive Washington Editor of the Wall
Street Journal, gloated:
"This is about as big a misstep as Bill
Clinton taking on Sister Souljah seven years ago because let me tell you
something, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey are the Sister Souljahs of the
Republican Party. This was W. at his best."

All three weekly news magazines found George W. Bush's calculated cracks
against conservatives a fine strategy. Newsweek guessed that in the
"Caring Clinton '90s," being attacked by Rush Limbaugh helps.
Time suggested only "posturing rivals and professional
loudmouths" objected, and demanded Bush do better than "kind
words and cold policies." U.S. News owner Mort Zuckerman asserted:
"George W. Bush did well to rebuke his party."

As compiled by the
MRC's Tim Graham, here are some excerpts from this week's MRC
MagazineWatch item about how the October 18 editions of the news magazines
assessed Bush's comments:

-- Time: The headline aptly summarized the
theme of Time's Eric Pooley: "George W. Bush is so deft he reminds
Bill Clinton of himself. But can the GOP front runner move his party to
the center -- and does he even want to try?"....

Both Time and Newsweek compared Bush's
attacks on conservatives with Clinton's 1992 Sister Souljah remarks. But
the black rapper had just suggested in a Washington Post interview that
"If black people kill black people everyday, why not have a week and
kill white people?...So if you're a gang member and you would normally be
killing somebody, why not kill a white person?" How courageous was
Clinton to oppose that? And how does it compare in any way to alleged
conservative obsessions with the Earned Income Tax Credit or the CBO?

Pooley despaired that Bush didn't stay
the bashing course, and noted one Bush camp spin, that he had only meant
to attack "perceptions" of the GOP, "was not courageous --
or true. The speech had been in the works for a month, and principled
slaps at the GOP had been in the earliest versions. Indeed, Bush had been
saying similar things in milder terms since summer, calculating that he
can chide conservatives and woo moderates without losing his right
flank."

But Pooley felt Bush's critics weren't
important: "Beyond the posturing rivals and professional loudmouths,
many conservative leaders secretly are not that concerned about what Bush
said last week. They know he has a history of offering moderate rhetoric,
then coming down solidly in their camp. Two weeks ago, he opposed a GOP
plan to delay tax-credit payments to low-income workers, saying his
party's leaders shouldn't 'balance their budget on the backs of the
poor.' But he supported the party's $800 billion tax-cut plan, which
would require deep cuts in worthy programs aimed at the same people."

Pooley liked Bush's Manhattan Institute
speech on education, with a proposal to bring his Texas education plan --
money from the top down, management from the bottom up -- to the other 49
states. "Now Bush is under the hot lights. He can either return to
his old pattern -- kind words and cold policies -- or offer more of the
innovative conservatism his new education proposal represents. Education
has always been his best issue, but he needs to build on it."

-- In Newsweek, Howard Fineman explained,
"Now Bush is navigating in the currents of the Caring Clinton '90s.
He is a self-described conservative, but one who says he has developed a
compassionate Third Way that has little in common with the coldblooded
spirit of the Hill-based GOP. He isn't afraid to wield the power of
government. Indeed, if the program is focused enough, Bush relishes its
use. He wants to increase the power of the Department of Education, for
example, not shrink it."

He concluded by arguing that conservative
complaints were actually good for Bush, agreeing with Bush advisers:
"Neither Forbes nor Gary Bauer can win the nomination, they contend,
and McCain -- who takes center stage in the campaign-finance-reform debate
this week -- is widely disliked on the right. 'Rush Limbaugh doesn't
like us this week,' said one top Bush adviser, 'so what does that
really mean?' If Bill Clinton's playbook is right, probably
everything."

END Excerpt

Other items in
this week's MagazineWatch:
-- Newsweek finally arrived on the FBI agents'
testimony of Justice Department footdragging on the fundraising scandal.
Well, actually, that's only briefly mentioned as the magazine
highlighted FBI chief Louis Freeh's troubled ethics.
-- Time landed the right to interview the Unabomber, and wondered whether
his brother was really a "moral superhero" for turning him in.
-- U.S. News reconsidered the Cold War, but Newsweek's Jonathan Alter
said it's the conservatives who never learned.
-- Celebrated feminist logician Anna Quindlen debuted in her new essayist
slot at Newsweek by bemoaning the benighted critics of the
dung-on-the-Virgin-Mary exhibit in Brooklyn.
To read these items, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/magwatch/mag19991012.html

Only from Dan Rather, his latest wacky Ratherism as announced on the
October 5 CBS Evening News:
"When it comes to fighting baldness, the
next wave could be gene therapy. So far, it works on laboratory animals
but the growth potential for hair and for drug company profits has
scientists scurrying to baldly go where no one has gone before. CBS's
Elizabeth Kaledin has the follicle facts on file."

Edmund Morris's shot at conservative journalists. Catching up, on a
plane flight over the weekend, with the October 4 Newsweek excerpt of
Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, I noticed another bit of evidence that
author Edmund Morris is on the left. In a paragraph about Reagan's
inaccurate statements about Iran-Contra, Morris asserted:
"He was capable of white lies when he
thought his mother's ghost would approve -- primarily to avoid hurting
people or breaching confidences -- and whoppers if he had read them in
conservative magazines, but, as both pre-brief and press conference
showed, he was terrible at concealing what he knew to be true."

No wonder the networks were so anxious to give
Morris air time to plug his book -- they knew he shared their disdain for
conservative media outlets.
--
Brent Baker

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